Recommended Reading – The Last Plague

Today I want to recommend THE LAST PLAGUE to you – the debut novel from Rich Hawkins. I’ve known Rich for a number of years now, and it’s been great to see him fulfil his writing ambitions. When we first met, I signed a book for him in Lowestoft (I think). This year, he signed a book for me!

THE LAST PLAGUE (available now from Crowded Quarantine) is a nasty, blood-soaked door-stop of a book which features more grotesques and mutilations than I ever thought possible to fit into five hundred pages. It’s relentlessly bleak and vicious, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. Here’s the synopsis. Click the link below for a few thoughts from Rich.

A pestilence has fallen across the land. Run and hide. Seek shelter. Do not panic. The infected WILL find you.

When Great Britain is hit by a devastating epidemic, four old friends must cross a chaotic, war-torn England to reach their families. But between them and home, the country is teeming with those afflicted by the virus – cannibalistic, mutated monsters whose only desires are to infect and feed.

THE LAST PLAGUE is here.

I asked Rich about his literary influences, and he told me they included “HP Lovecraft, Gary McMahon, Wayne Simmons, yourself, Tim Curran, Adam Nevill and Conrad Williams. I first became interested in horror after watching John Carpenter’s THE THING when I was a kid. I’m a big fan of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction.”

So what’s on the horizon for Mr H? “My future plans involve the release of my novella BLACK STAR, BLACK SUN to be published by April Moon Books early next year. Voodoo Press have picked up THE LAST PLAGUE to be translated into German. And I’m currently writing the sequel, which is set in Britain a few months after the initial outbreak.”

Once again, I’m very pleased to recommend Rich Hawkins’ THE LAST PLAGUE. Written in a sparse, staccato style, and with a cast of strong characters and an unending torrent of body horror, it’s one of the most intriguing post-apocalyptic novels I’ve read in a long time.